People Are Strange

I shut the world out this weekend and watched several Robert Altman movies. That could be a good thing but it only served to make me more cynical about the machinations of people and their motives. I did this to free my mind, but damn you Mister Altman, it only made me more suspicious and disheartened.

Why is it that we question the motives of people? I've often regarded things at face value but the truth is, it's so easy to judge.

Fang and I had dinner out on Saturday with Viv and Ray, some friends from our apartment building. As I drove to some furtive but apparently wonderful dive in The Bronx, Viv barked driving orders to me. She immediately got on my nerves. She insulted me twice within 20 minutes (blond privilege and California references)and she utterly dominated the conversation. Throughout the evening, she and the other two men enjoyed copious cocktails. I was the driver so I sipped seltzer. I started to see this woman reveal. She was someone who harbored many talents, but her issues with her mother eventually unfolded and she showed vulnerability as well as a stubborn streak. Despite my fascination with the complexity of her issues, she was also so defensive and superior that I knew that a relationship with her would be a one-sided affair. it's a shame that the inferiority her mother bestowed on her makes her so anxious to prove her worth--she'd be truly interesting without this roadblock.

I went to my hairdresser on Sunday afternoon for a haircut. She'd just returned from a long vacation with her family and she had real issues with her husband. As she snipped away at my spilt ends, she revealed her lack of her husband's reliability, his previous history as a cheater (the last time, during her third pregnancy)and the dysfunction in her family and with her in-laws. She then admitted a flirtation with one of her customers who had texted her (and her husband had read). Panty references were involved. Trouble erupted. I counseled her to have a sit down with her husband. Or a lawyer.

One of my colleagues today confided that April was a difficult month because her mother had died in April. At last I could commiserate. My mother also died in April. As a means of offering commonality I said, "As T.S. Elliot once said, April is the cruelest month." She then launched into the trauma of her loss and while sympathetic, I saw this person had no desire to move beyond an event that had clearly traumatized her. I listened patiently and offered sympathy but in the end, I sensed that there was much work for this person to do to find her own life and identity. She's a genuinely lovely person but clearly the loss undermined her confidence and direction.

I thought about her a lot today. I thought about a lot of people and their issues today. Mine own included, trust me. We are complicated beings.

Maybe it's better that I don't watch Altman again for awhile.